Brutal: Tom Coburn quits the Gang of Six

posted at 6:02 pm on May 17, 2011 by Allahpundit

Remember what Alan Simpson said after Obama’s disastrous, demagogic, compromise-destroying attack on Paul Ryan a few weeks ago? He knew he’d just seen any chance of a deal between the Republican and Democratic leaderships go up in smoke. Quote:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) announced Tuesday that he would pull out of the talks with two other Republican and three Democratic colleagues…

“We can’t bridge the gulf of where we need to go on mandatory spending,” Corburn said Tuesday afternoon. “I don’t see that there’s going to be any fruition in continuing them at this time.”

Coburn has insisted for weeks that Social Security reform, including cutting benefits, would have to be part of any Gang of Six deal. But Democrats such as Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said they wanted to deal with Social Security reform separately, not as part of a broad deficit-reduction package…

“We’re at an impasse,” Coburn said. “There’s no reason to sit and talk about the same things over and over and not get any movement.

He allowed that there’s a slim chance talks could pick up again, but if the sticking point is whether or not to include Social Security reform in their grand bargain on the deficit, then realistically they’re not going to find common ground. Saxby Chambliss and Mike Crapo are still part of the “Gang” on the GOP side, but neither one of them has the sort of conservative cred that’ll be needed to sell a compromise in the unlikely event that they reach one. (Chambliss, in fact, is already under suspicion on the right for appearing a bit too eager to include tax hikes in the deal.) Coburn, necessarily, was going to have to be the point man on that, and now he’s gone. Maybe it’s a stunt designed to shake up the negotiations and force an agreement that’ll lure him back, but if it doesn’t work, then the only budget game in town right now is the comically pathetic Biden group, whose own members aren’t taking it seriously. Said Jim DeMint, who’s not a member but has it pegged, “It will be historic, but it will be meaningless.” Exactly. Which leaves us … where on entitlement reform?

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Which leaves us … where on entitlement reform?
I guess it’s going to take a fiscal collapse after all.

I think you answered your own question, AP. It’s human nature to not deal with these sorts of things until we have to. And that’s especially true of politicians. The problem with a financial collapse is that it’ll ruin everyone’s lives. And unfortunately I suspect the Beltway crowd’s solution then will be monetizing our debt. If printing a trillion or two is doing this much harm to the dollar, I don’t wanna imagine how things will look then.

It seems the Democrats WANT a collapse, if they’re this intransigent about “mandatory” spending.

JeffWeimer on May 17, 2011 at 6:06 PM

I think they do. Collapse would put all their constituents out in the street demanding whatever. Maybe they just plan on a total overthrow and imposition of a socialist state. The constitution and property rights have just been in their way for a long time.

Coburn has insisted for weeks that Social Security reform, including cutting benefits, would have to be part of any Gang of Six deal. But Democrats such as Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said they wanted to deal with Social Security reform separately, not as part of a broad deficit-reduction package…

Conrad and the other dems refuse to believe that the party is over. We can no longer raid SS taxes to cover the deficits, because the SS is running a negative cash flow too.

Ron Paul brings up a great point about selling the Fort Knox gold today. The federal government has all kinds of assets it can sell of to avoid hitting the debt limit: gold, national parks, buildings, military bases here and Iraq and Afghanistan, military aircraft and vehicles, highways, post office, etc.

Ron Paul brings up a great point about selling the Fort Knox gold today. The federal government has all kinds of assets it can sell of to avoid hitting the debt limit: gold, national parks, buildings, military bases here and Iraq and Afghanistan, military aircraft and vehicles, highways, post office, etc.

Spathi on May 17, 2011 at 6:26 PM

Can the U.S. do a Chapter 11? Maybe the international court at The Hague can oversee that.

The problem with a financial collapse is that it’ll ruin everyone’s lives. And unfortunately I suspect the Beltway crowd’s solution then will be monetizing our debt. If printing a trillion or two is doing this much harm to the dollar, I don’t wanna imagine how things will look then.

Doughboy on May 17, 2011 at 6:12 PM

“solution then will be monetizing the debt”? We’ve been monetizing the debt for months now- see QE1 and QE2. We pumped in $600 billion of funny money and that’s why stocks keep rising despite all the bad news. It’s just a crazy house of cards. The Fed is going to keep buying U.S. Treasuries after QE2 ends in June, even if they don’t call it QE3. Otherwise we default. How is it that we still have AAA ratings when we’re the largest debtor nation? How is it that Geithner can say “there is no risk” of losing the AAA rating? Does it even mean anything anymore?

Tom Coburn is a kind man, a smart man, and a patriot. But having watched from a very close angle these same kinds of fights at the highest levels of the Episcopal Church (where an eerily similar battle is being waged), I can tell you that Coburn is doing our side more harm than good. Here’s why:

First, precisely because he is kind and smart and patriotic, whenever he sits down with Democrats who aren’t serious about getting our financial situation under control, he legitimizes their goofball positions. By his appearing as so reasonable a man, he makes it easy for the media, the mushy middle voters, and that camp of Senate and House Republicans immediately to his right, to look at intransigent Democrats – fools all – as being reasonable also. This is not good for the country.

Second, because he is kind and smart and a patriot, he is like Charlie Brown and the football: He will keep going back to the Dems and their feckless commissions over and over and over. All that has to happen is for the dust to settle over *this* particular incident, and for a new Alan Simpson to ask him to join in some new talks among “moderates,” and Coburn will take his seat again on the next Committee To Nowhere that gets formed.

Third, when the inevitable happens (he realizes that there’s no reasoning or compromising with these idiot losers) he will walk away in frustration. At which point the liberals get to characterize HIM as the problem, not the Democrats who are either too clueless or too wedded to their ideology to compromise. He becomes the embodiment of “The Party of No,” and plays right into the narrative of Republicans as meanies and extremists. He can’t compromise. He quits before he’s given it a chance. He walks away when the going gets tough. you’ve seen it a thousand times – you can write the sound bites yourself.

So, it has to stop. If this country is going to avoid complete financial collapse, it’s going to be because enough people with enough backbone get sent to Washington with orders to come back with their shields, or on them.

So rather than some reform, and cuts….Dems would rather continue on the same path, misuse the money as govt has for so many years, then tax the hell out of us, for their mistakes, or let the country nose dive. Perfect!!!

I’ve suspected from the first that that is where this will go. The guys in charge either don’t believe the situation is serious, they’re too cowardly to change, or a collapse is what they wanted all along. I suspect one and two, to tell you the truth, although I’m sure Obama has his sights set on three.

People don’t change ingrained behavior easily. Most of the time they will continue on, telling themselves the situation isn’t all that bad anyhow. And when the boss tries to force a change, they ignore it as much as possible and quickly return to their old habits. This group isn’t listening to the boss, and I’m sure don’t think the situation is so bad. I doubt they’ll believe it when everything goes to hell in a hand basket.

Defund the government in the middle of the so called “war on terror.”
These wing nuts must be the side the “Al Qaeda.”

Spathi on May 17, 2011 at 6:36 PM

No, but you are and always have been as long as the terrorists were against George Bush. Trolls like Spathi (the cowardly clam) not spatha (the Roman battle sword) will take any side of the argument as long as it is agsinst GWB. By the way dumbo, “Al Queda” doesn’t have to be in quotes unless you are too dumb to understand that is a proper noun, the name of an organization.

So rather than some reform, and cuts….Dems would rather continue on the same path, misuse the money as govt has for so many years, then tax the hell out of us, for their mistakes, or let the country nose dive. Perfect!!!

capejasmine on May 17, 2011 at 6:47 PM

That’s about the size of it.

But I wouldn’t completely blame the politicians.

People are going to get the mess that they voted for. Look at the poll numbers for Ryan’s plan. Some voters know what’s going on but too many believe that the solution is to tax the rich more.

Milton Friedman once said that the key to democracy lies in not electing the “right people” but to make it political advantageous for the wrong people to do the right thing. We’ll never have a complete choir of angels for our representatives but we need to turn up the heat on the fallen angels that we do have.

We all suffer from the Normalcy Bias. We don’t think things could get that bad in this country. But we are already just moving our debt around without paying any of it off, we’re even increasing our spending. It’s insanity.

Our nation has reached a point where it is paying out 90% of the money it raises each month from the sales of U.S. treasuries, just to pay back the holders of maturing U.S. treasuries their principle and interest earned. The U.S. needs to continuously sell larger amounts of new debt, just to stay afloat, so there is no conceivable way that any unbiased organization can possibly give the U.S. a credit rating of AAA. The only reason we haven’t defaulted on our debts is the Federal Reserve’s ability to create monetary inflation and the world’s willingness to hoard U.S. dollars due to its status as the world’s reserve currency.

Did anyone really believe that the Democrats would be logical in these negotiations? Coburn was just wasting his time or maybe he kept the other two GOP rats from capitulating completely. Very few people in DC politics really want to cut spending and that is for both sides!

There was NO NEED for the GOP to take on entitlements when they only had ONE house of Congress.

The thing to have done – would have been to ELIMINATE STUPID DISCRETIONARY STUFF. Raise the Debt Limit? Ah sure – but that means PPP, NEA, NPR, PBS, and a whole host of subsidies go out the window!

We could have KICKED ASS and eliminated every stupid discretionary spending item in the budget – and more. No way the Dims would allow the Debt Ceiling to crash on us for PPP. No way they’ll let it happen for NPR … it’s politically untenable for them.

But Medicare and Social Security – now … that gets Mr. and Mrs John Q. Public involved – as stakeholders – or … stake loosers.

We could have eliminated all stupid discretionary spending – WON the races in 2012 and with a GOP government – reformed entitlements THEN. And it would have been a lot easier because we would not have been asking Mr and Mrs John Q to sacrifice FIRST … we’d have eliminated the idiots from the government books first.

But – let’s not let common sense get in the way of the GOP’s self-destruction shall we?

It’s going to take another election, another massive repudiation of lefty economic and regulatory policies. Democrats will spend decades trying to recover if Republicans will cut away big chunks of Big Government.